


Keep Hold Of Me

by orphan_account



Category: Booksmart (2019), House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depression, Duncan went to jail, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Head Injury, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Touch-Starved, personal trainer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 12:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21392341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Duncan reckons that he’s about 1.4 seconds away from braining himself strategically with a barbell when Gigi says, “I think that’s enough for today.”
Relationships: Gigi (Booksmart)/Duncan Shepherd
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	Keep Hold Of Me

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own.
> 
> The bit about Duncan jogging is taken from Marc Maron's stand up routine Too Real (2017).

“You…sadistic…bitch,” Duncan pants, arms shaking like hell underneath his weight.

Gigi frowns at his wobbly plank and pushes his ass down, down with her sneakered foot until his body is a horizontal line. All of Duncan’s muscles are screaming: his arms, his non-existent abs, his back. “And _breathe_,” Gigi tells him, voice a decent imitation of an aloof yoga instructor. It’s a ruse. Duncan knows that there’s a snake lurking behind those half-closed eyes.

Gigi slurps obnoxiously on her wheatgrass shake and tugs at one of her pigtails. “How many glasses of scotch did you have last night? This is weak sauce, Shepherd. You won’t survive the winter with a plank like that.”

“Fuck…you,” Duncan spits. He’s not telling her about the two candy bars that he had with his scotch. Gigi's last raid on his pantry left him with nothing but seaweed wafers and Greek yogurt. A man cannot survive on Nori alone.

The pressure of Gigi’s foot lets up. She winds her way around Duncan’s ugly grey yoga mat and drops to her knees in front of him. Duncan’s ready for some ridiculous pep talk, when she asks, tone so pragmatic that it makes his toes curl with surprise, “why are you doing this?”

Duncan grits his teeth. “Clearly…I’m…a…masochist,” he grunts.

Gigi just huffs, “clearly you’re an ex-con with a sugar addiction.” She narrows her eyes on Duncan’s face. “This isn’t funny. You need to take this seriously or you’re never going to make any progress.”

Duncan finally breaks and flops face-down on the mat in a puddle of sweat, feeling lightheaded. His shaky exhale makes all of the muscles in his back and legs jump. “Maybe I’m content to be an underachiever,” he manages.

Overhead, Gigi sighs. “You know that exercise isn’t a replacement for therapy, right?”

“Gigi, really, this much personalized attention? Someone might get jealous and try to jump me in the parking lot,” Duncan says, glaring at his own forearms. Fuck his arms. They’re still shaking.

“Duncan, I’m your _personal_ trainer.”

“Right then, you’re fired,” Duncan tells her. He doesn’t dare turn his head, because trying not to pass out is taxing enough. He doesn’t think that he can to do that _and_ stomach the pity in Gigi’s eyes.

Gigi pats Duncan's shoulder with the confidence of someone who’s been threatened with unemployment every session since the start of their nine-month contract. Duncan tries very hard not to enjoy the warm weight of her hand on his shoulder. Or the smell of her shampoo. It’s something lush and a little bitter today. Apricot maybe? It was cucumber-melon last month.

_Stop. Stop it_, he thinks.

Gigi ignores his sass and springs back up to a standing position. The only sign that she’s perturbed is the loss of her soothing intonation. “Enough lollygagging,” she snaps. “Get your ass on the treadmill so that we can finish our warmup.”

Because he’s a shit, Duncan groans and pretends to be spaghetti so that she’ll pull him up to his feet. Five months in and he’s still impressed by the strength in her petite frame. There had been a point during their first 60 minute torture session—Gigi had been demonstrating the proper form for a push-up—when Duncan had nearly come in pants thinking about all of the ways that she could manhandle him. Exhaustion and nausea keep the same thing from happening now.

Gigi takes Duncan from the treadmills to the punching bags, and from there to the weights. Her voice and her nearness give him a little bit of comfort as the next hour passes in a blur of sweat and swear words. Duncan reckons that he’s about 1.4 seconds away from braining himself strategically with a barbell when Gigi says, “I think that’s enough for today.”

Ten minutes later, Gigi stops her stretching on the mat across from him and Duncan tries not to say anything that will embarrass him, like _no don’t go_. Or _do you want to stop at the juice bar for a drink that tastes like ass?_ But Gigi’s already grabbing her duffle bag and drifting away in a whirl of leopard print spandex, chattering on about some reality TV show that she watched last night. And Duncan’s chest squeezes, because it will be still and quiet in his apartment and most nights he longs for anything but.

He showers with practiced efficiency in a private stall and makes his way out to the front lobby of the gym. Gigi's already there. She gives him a little wave over her shoulder and he freezes, fingers spasming around his keys. Mild panic rolls through him at the idea of sitting up alone with his thoughts. He’ll have to stop at the liquor store—he’d finished all of his scotch again last night. Call girls are an option, but his ability to muster a decent cockstand is spotty these days. Grimacing, Duncan resigns himself to another evening of drinking himself numb and waits for Gigi to slip through the doors in front of him.

Gigi starts to push the door open and then stops suddenly to look back at him. Her dark eyes flit from the circles under his eyes to the white-knuckle grip of his hand around his car keys. Her mouth twists with indecision. Duncan can’t tell if it’s because she wants to stay or if she wants to go. He doesn’t let himself hope.

“See you later, Shepherd. Be gentle with yourself tonight,” Gigi says quietly, fingers tap-tapping on the glass in front of her. Duncan remembers the press of those fingertips and takes a moment to marvel at the unselfconscious way that Gigi touches the world around her. He blinks and she’s gone, slipping through the doors to the parking lot. The loneliness that fills the vacuum feels like a knife plunged into his back.

\--

The truly terrible thing, Duncan thinks, half a bottle of scotch in, is that he would suffer any number of indignities in that gym if Gigi would keep touching him. It’s strange how attached you can become to someone with repeated exposure. He only hired a personal trainer to help him regain the 20 pounds that he lost in prison. Now, seeing Gigi is one of the only reasons that he leaves his penthouse.

The crippling anxiety that he feels in crowds makes socializing a struggle. Gigi is one of three people that he sees regularly besides Annette and the pimply faced teenager behind the till at the grocery store he buys his Reese cups from.

His mother wasn’t very tactile when he was growing up—too emotionally stunted by her own upbringing—but his nannies were always big huggers. He'd liked it. He'd liked the casual squeezes for finishing his lunch and for cleaning his room. He still likes it. It’s just that these days, no one touches him unless they want something from him. It's like they’re afraid to be tainted; like jail is something transmissible that still lingers on his skin. 

\--

Two days later, he wakes to the sound of pounding on his front door.

“Shepherd!” Gigi yells. “You better not be drowning in a puddle of vomit!”

Duncan groans. _Is it Friday already?_ He cracks an eye open to check the clock on his bedside table and sees that it’s 2pm. _Jesus_. Eighteen hours unaware_. _A new record. 

“Shit,” he grunts, pushing himself up from the bed through sheer will. Everything hurts. Even the backs of his knees. Bleary eyed, he scrapes a shirt off of his bedroom floor and stumbles his way out to the front entry.

Gigi’s face is unimpressed when he pulls the door open. “Fuck,” she breathes, eyes wide. “I’ve met roadkill that looks better than you.” Her long hair is in a lop-sided ponytail, and today, her t-shirt says Rock, Paper, Lesbians. She’s the most beautiful thing that Duncan’s ever seen.

Her hand comes up like she’s thinking about touching his face, but she plants it in the middle of his chest instead, pushing him back through the doorway. She strides into his kitchen like she owns it and starts flicking on lights and pulling things out of the refrigerator. Duncan follows in a daze that is partly due to her Day-Glo orange shorts. Gigi smells like sunshine and productivity and if he weren’t so fond of her company, he’d find it annoying.

His personal nag drops a cursed container of Greek yogurt on the counter and Duncan squints at her suspiciously. “We’re not supposed to meet for another hour on Fridays.”

“When was the last time that you ate something with nutritional value?” Gigi asks, ignoring his statement. The question has Duncan furrowing his brow and smacking his lips in contemplation. He's 70% certain that he had a bowl of cereal yesterday. The sour-sweet film on his tongue is fairly damming, but the Lucky Charms that he finds in his facial hair seal his fate.

Gigi hums knowingly as Duncan brushes the cereal off of his cheek and slides a bowl of yogurt with bananas and blueberries in front of him. “Eat up. We’re going down to the park to work on your endurance after you shower and air this place out.” Duncan would probably eat dirt if Gigi asked him to. He hesitates for a moment out of principle and then begrudgingly goes for his spoon. Suddenly, Gigi reaches out and catches his hand. She peers down at his fingers, so much larger than hers, and gently touches each one. Duncan has cuts on his fingertips from the bottle that he smashed in his tub after a particularly violent nightmare.

Duncan’s heart beats like a caged bird. Gigi must feel it because her gaze snaps up to his face. “Careful, Mr. Shepherd,” she says.

\--

After their third lap of the park, Duncan has to stop his slow jog and take a knee out of genuine fear for his life. His hands are numb and his heart’s trying to climb up his throat. He lost the ability to sweat 10 minutes ago. “This doesn’t happen here, and it doesn’t happen _outside_,” he gasps, appealing to a God that he doesn’t believe in.

“Try to slow your breathing,” Gigi tells him, and there’s _definitely _laughter in her husky voice. “Inhale 1, 2, 3…exhale 1, 2, 3…there you go, isn’t that better?”

Duncan, who’s still tasting blood in his mouth and shaking like a wet Chihuahua, shouts, “fucking _no_, Gigi!”

“Well,” she says, “how about we lay down in the grass for a little while instead.”

Which is how they end up on their backs, watching the clouds and passing a water bottle back and forth until Duncan’s heart settles into a rhythm that’s not in need of medical intervention.

“If you wanted to murder me, there are easier ways,” he tells her.

Gigi rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a drama queen. If I wanted to kill you, I’d tell every store from here to Virginia to stop selling you chocolate bars.”

“Well,” Duncan sniffs, “I appreciate your candor.” And he does. The last person who was so honest with him threatened to gut him with a spork if he didn't quit talking to them. 

Apparently, nearly dying in a public park warrants conversation about the mysteries of the universe. Gigi rolls over and gazes at Duncan with the hazy yet ultra-focused _Look _that makes him wonder if she’s medicated or just the owner of some really good weed. “Do you think the Yeti is real?” she asks, apropos of nothing.

Duncan sorts water out of his nose and laughs, clutching the stitch that immediately flares to life under his ribs. “What?”

Gigi grins. “Well, do you? I heard on the radio that a scientist is trying to prove that it’s like the third cousin of some polar bear that’s old as balls. But where’s the fun in that?”

Duncan scratches at his chin and tries to catch up with her train of thought. He’s feeling too woozy on the endorphins and endocannabinoids that his brain is pumping out to feel particularly depressed or anxious about anything. It’s nice. “Can’t say that I’ve thought much about it," he says, finally.

He would feel bad for his lack of effort, but Gigi's never required much input from him anyway. True to form, she takes his non-comment in stride and offers, “Yeti’s probably that socially awkward cousin that all of the other polar bears avoid at family events.”

Duncan smiles, bemused. “You mean the cousin with uncomfortably moist hands who’s always telling people about the weird mole on his back and his magic card tournaments?”

Gigi reaches up and strokes the side of his face with a finger, just once, lightly. “And you had braces too, right?”

He barks another laugh. “Fuck off, you nasty bitch, I’m still near death,” he warns, feeling anything but.

They walk the last lap around the park debating the existence of other cryptids. Duncan finds that he has surprisingly strong views about the Mothman.

“Believe what you want about Loch Ness,” he says, gesturing excitedly with his hands, “but this guy in the cell next to me, he was from Pikeville West Virginia—had more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei—and he swore up and down that he saw a dark figure swoop down at his truck in ’67. He swerved, of course, and hit the traffic barrier. When the tow-truck showed up to haul him back to town, the driver told him he was lucky that he went off of the road when he did. Allegedly, one of his front wheels was minutes from falling off. All of the lug nuts had come loose!” He finishes his story with a flourish and slants a look at Gigi. Pink flares out across his cheeks when he realizes that she’s staring at him again, her mouth twitching in that way that it does when she’s analyzing him. “What?” he asks.

Gigi blinks. The smile that she’s repressing breaks through. Slowly, so that he has time to pull away, she reaches out and cups his elbow, dragging him closer so that she can hook her arm through his. Duncan’s still reeling from his cardiac crisis, so he’s not entirely convinced that this is reality. It’s impossible, but Gigi’s smile gets brighter when he doesn’t pull away. “I think that’s the first time that you’ve shared something with me about prison,” she says.

Duncan’s been conditioned by an armada of lawyers to respond to questions about his plea-bargain and three-year sentence with dismissal. Unthinking, he retorts, “your verbal diarrhea must be catching.”

Gigi’s heavy sigh makes Duncan panic that she’s going to take her hands away. “I feel comfortable talking to you,” he blurts. “You’re safe. You make me feel safe.” And now everything coming out of his mouth feels mortifying. Or maybe it’s just Gigi and her unnervingly perceptive gaze. “Apparently I consider you a friend.”

“Duncan Shepherd,” Gigi whispers, pulling him to a stop. Duncan's filled with worry until he catches the twinkle of humour in her eyes. “Are you saying that I’ve grown on you?”

“Like a parasitic moss,” he replies tartly, like a liar.

“Emotional expression is a good look on you,” Gigi tells him.

Duncan shudders. “Christ, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

\--

He spends an hour picking up around the Penthouse after his and Gigi’s run. He even answers the door for the cleaning crew that his mother had insisted on hiring when he was released. Looking at the view from his living room windows, he has to admit that Gigi was right—keeping the blinds open does lend a certain cheeriness to the room.

Predictably, his good mood comes to a grinding halt around 3am. The doorman, used to his nighttime wanderings, doesn’t raise an eyebrow when Duncan shuffles out of the lobby and onto the sidewalk in sweatpants, a holey shirt and flip-flops.

It doesn’t feel right to wear the trappings of a world that he doesn’t belong to anymore. These days, he orders twelve packs of shirts online from Walmart because he’s gotten used to the feel of 60% cotton against his skin.

He's standing in the checkout line at the 24-hour market two blocks down from his building, Sour Cherry Blasters and Reese cups clutched in his hands, when he notices two big brown eyes staring at him. Duncan looks over the top of his sunglasses and eyes the baby peeking over his mother’s shoulder at him very seriously.

“Don’t judge,” he tells the infant. “If you can believe it, I looked worse this morning.” The little boy blows a spit bubble in response and tries to eat his fist. The effect is by far the single most adorable thing that Duncan has ever witnessed. He makes a goofy face and wins a smile.

The mother turns her head then, alerted by the sound of giggling, and darts a look from her happy baby to Duncan. “Oh, thank God,” she sighs. “He hasn’t stopped crying all night.”

Duncan clears his throat and rocks back on his heels, not wanting to appear creepy. “Happens to the best of us,” he says, tone breezy.

The woman’s laugh and the polite smile that she sends him before turning around unknots something in his chest. The prospect of returning home suddenly doesn’t feel quite as bleak.

\--

Monday morning, Duncan drags himself out of bed at ass o’clock to meet Gigi at Georgetown Park on the waterfront for Tai Chi. This is their fifth class with this group, so Duncan settles into the exercises with little effort and lets his body go on autopilot. The light wind on his face and the synchronized movements of the people around him are soothing. Duncan realizes mid-way through that he’s no longer bothered by the person at his back.

Drunk on a sense of accomplishment, Duncan accepts Mrs. Davis’ invitation to the intermediate class on Thursday mornings. It’ll mean getting up early another day of the week, but it’s not like he has a job or anything.

Gigi’s so ecstatic that Duncan’s committed to an activity of his own choosing, that she throws herself at him and locks her arms around his middle.

“Gigi,” Duncan says, keeping his voice steady with serious effort. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Hugging you.”

Duncan feels one of her hands start rubbing circles into his back. “W-Why?” he stutters. He might as well be naked for how thoroughly the warmth of her touch seeps into his skin and bones.

“Because I want to,” Gigi says, voice muffled slightly by his shirt.

Duncan nods once, looking skyward and coughs into his fist. “Okay then, glad that we got that sorted.” Tentatively, he wraps his arms around her. In reward, Gigi runs her hand up the jut of his spine to the base of his neck and back down again. He blows out a breath and relaxes into her, trying very hard not to moan.

Gigi makes Duncan want. He wants to thank her for making him feel again, even if it's only for an hour a day, three days out of the week. He wants to ask her to spend time with him that he doesn’t pay her for. Most of all, he wants to pick her up and never let her go.

But he doesn’t do any of those things because he knows that he’s a rotten bastard who doesn’t deserve it.

Still, Gigi seems to understand. She holds him for a long while as everyone packs up.

Duncan goes home that night and dumps all of his scotch, even the bottle in the toilet tank, down the drain. He follows the typed instructions Gigi left on the side of his fridge and makes himself a spinach and feta omelet. It’s not half bad.

\--

And for another two weeks, things go well. Duncan stops drinking himself into oblivion in the evenings and starts experimenting with cooking. He develops a love for the Food Network and the Barefoot Contessa. When he turns up to his workouts, he’s hydrated and well rested. Gigi hugs him so many times that he actually loses count and stops flinching at the press of her body against his. And twenty minutes into their Wednesday gym session, when he tugs her pigtail gently and asks, “do you want to get one of those juices that tastes like ass before we leave?” Gigi dimples at him and says, “ass and kale’s my favourite.”

Her easy acceptance puts Duncan, who on some level had still been expecting rejection, so off-centre that he’s clumsy when he returns the barbells they were using to their stand. He turns to walk to back to where Gigi's waiting by the climbing ropes and trips over his own foot. The flailing of his limbs jostles a dudebro flexing in front of the mirror for Instagram.

“What the fuck!” the guy yells, immediately getting up in Duncan’s face.

Duncan tries to back away and apologize. “Sorry, man,” he says with a guilty wave of his hand. “I didn’t see you there.”

The guy keeps advancing on him, body language plainly aggressive. He looks Duncan up and down for a moment and Duncan sees recognition light in his eyes. “Hey,” the guy says, “aren’t you that Shepherd who went to prison for treason? I bet they beat your traitor ass pretty good in there.”

Duncan goes rigid at the reminder, bile crawling up his throat. He feels his eyes prickle and diverts his gaze to the floor, not wanting the asshole to see his tears.

The guy snorts and gets right up close to put his lips by Duncan’s ear. “That trainer of yours is pretty tasty," he drawls. "If I only had my dick to play with for three years, I’d want to get a taste of that snatch too.”

Rage. Hot and volatile.

“You don’t _look _at her,” Duncan spits, tone venomous. He throws an elbow into the guy’s gut. The move is enough to push him away, but it also gives him enough room to throw a punch at his face.

The force of the hit sends Duncan’s head into the mirror behind him with a loud crack. 

The last thing he sees before he loses consciousness is Gigi’s furious and frightened face, saying, _“if you die of a head injury, Shepherd, I’m going to drag you screaming back!”_

\--

Gigi’s always so full of energy that Duncan expected her to be bouncing off of the walls during an emergency. This, as it turns out, isn’t the case at all. The cold efficiency with which Gigi bundles him into her Volkswagen beetle and shuttles him off to the nearest hospital would have impressed even his late uncle Bill.

Every time Duncan opens his mouth to say something, she shoots him a chilling look that has all of the spit drying up in his mouth. She keeps muttering something about chivalrous bastards under her breath.

Five hours and one CT scan later, Dr. Zhang pulls back the curtain around his stretcher and announces, “Mr. Shepherd, it seems that you’re the owner of a shiny concussion.”

Dread churns Duncan’s queasy stomach. He knows from past experiences that you have to be under 24-hour observation for a concussion. The doctor will probably try to make him stay the night because he lives alone.

He needs to cut this short before Zhang can float the suggestion. A few more hours, and some desperate employee will slip his location to the paps. He doesn’t want Gigi caught up in that shitstorm.

“Whelp,” Duncan says, popping the p in his mouth, “if you have some meds that I can take for this headache we’ll be on our way.”

Looking murderous, Gigi grabs his wrist and squeezes punishingly. “No meds," she tells the doctor. "He’s an addict. He’ll survive with ice and Tylenol.”

Duncan chooses that moment to vomit all down the front of his hospital gown. “You’re a _hateful, hateful _bitch, Gigi,” he says, gasping for breath.

Gigi just passes him a Kleenex and pets his hair. “And yet, I think you might love me.” Duncan dry heaves in response.

In the end, Dr. Zhang lets him go with Gigi’s promise that she’ll stay with him through the night. The trip to his building takes five times longer than it should because Gigi has to keep pulling over for him to throw up.

Duncan has never appreciated her strength more than when she’s using it to haul him from the car, across the lobby, and into the elevator. She even snags an umbrella stand for him to upchuck into.

It still feels like he got hit with an anvil, but the gentle way that Gigi lays him down in his bed and presses ice to the back of his neck helps ease the throbbing that the Tylenol he dry swallowed can't.

Gigi sighs and shifts on the side of the bed. “What am I going to do with you?” 

Duncan cracks his eyelids open and reaches out for her hand, a bit timid after her blunt acknowledgement of his feelings.

“Someone once told me that emotional expression was a good look on me,” he says, speech halting like it hurts.

Gigi rolls her eyes and strokes her thumb across the back of his hand. “This person sounds very wise and beautiful. Fae-like, one might say.”

“Oh, she’s certainly something,” he responds. Gigi flicks his nose and chuckles quietly at his agonized squint.

Duncan inhales a breath and fists his free hand in the blankets. There are things that he needs to get out in case he doesn’t wake up in the morning. “I guess,” he says, grasping at his courage and swallowing, “I just wanted to say that, yes, I may sort of be _inlovewithyou_. And I know that it's unhealthy and we only see each other because I pay you, but you’re sort of the reason that I get out of bed in the morning.”

“Duncan,” Gigi says, voice breathless in a way that makes his throat catch and his eyes mist. “I stopped cashing your cheques three months ago, _you stupid ass_.”

Duncan squeezes his eyes shut and feels tears of disbelief coarse down his cheeks. All of the emotion that he’s been repressing, the anger, the self-loathing, the belief that he isn’t worth loving, rise in his chest and choke him. He licks his lips and tastes salt. It’s silent for a moment as he struggles to finds his voice again. Eventually, tone wobbling, he asks, “do you think that maybe you could just—lay down with me and be here for a while?”

Gigi strokes the sides of his face and presses a kiss to the middle of his forehead. He breaks under her lips and sobs. “Yeah, baby,” Gigi says softly, her own voice thick with tears. “Yeah I can do that.”

Gigi crawls into bed with him and arranges Duncan half on top of her with his sore head pressed to her neck. Duncan inhales her scent of apricots and sunshine and lets her hold him together through the night.

For the first time in a long time, he drifts off to sleep feeling hopeful that everything is going to be alright.


End file.
